Kataria, who has been chargesheeted by CBI in the Sohrabuddin fake encounter case, today expressed confidence that he will come out clean in the matter.CHANDIGARH: Hearing a case against the allotment of change of land use (CLU) licences, the Punjab and Haryana high court has ruled that the "first come, first served" policy adopted by the Haryana government was not transparent and had inherently dangerous implications.

Relying on various Supreme Court verdicts, the high court said the policy had a fundamental flaw and it involved an element of pure chance or accident.

Setting aside CLU licences granted by the previous Bhupinder Singh Hooda government in 2010 to develop group housing projects in Sector 63A in Gurgaon, a division bench headed by Justice Hemant Gupta said, "We find that the principle of first come, first served has led to an unholy race. Since Gurgaon is a fast developing urban complex, there is large demand for licences, but we find it is not fair and reasonable to accept the application(s) on the basis of draft development plan and grant the licence(s) on first come, first served basis."

"Any person who has access to the power corridor at the highest or the lowest level may be able to obtain information from the government files or the files of the agency/instrumentality of the state that a particular public property or asset is likely to be disposed of or a contract is likely to be awarded or a licence or permission is likely to be given, he would immediately make an application and would become entitled to stand first in the queue at the cost of all others who may have a better claim," the judgment said.

The order came in the wake of a petition filed by Pawan Bhatia of Gurgaon, who had sought a CBI probe into the case. Bhatia owned 13.5 acres of land in the revenue estate of Ullawas village and had applied for a licence to develop a group housing colony on September 10, 2010.

His counsel argued that applications submitted by four builders had the same deficiencies as the petitioner's, but their applications were accepted and the petitioner's rejected in November 2010. It was alleged that licences were being granted for "malicious and illegal considerations" so as to bestow wrongful gains to "privileged builders/developers".

Allowing the petition, the high court observed that though there is a provision for rejection of the application, the action of permitting some of the applicants to make up the deficiencies, while declining such permission to the other, is an arbitrary process of grant of licence.